


Trade Winds

by Fells



Category: The Traitor Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Polygamy, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:14:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21787351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fells/pseuds/Fells
Summary: Enroute to the Llosydanes, Apparitor weighs the past against the immediate future whileHelbridefloats listless on the Ashen Sea.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Trade Winds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cadmean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadmean/gifts).



"You," Svir hisses at the cramped, grimy walls of his cabin. "I see you. Flighty fucking bastard."

It's dark and he's drunk and he eventually concludes that he's become a haruspex overnight, capable of reading prophetic messages in the slimy guts of his ship when no one else is looking. All of the greasy shelves and surfaces within reach of his sleeping nook have been deeply scarred by knicks from his writing nibs (sometimes he's lazy about grinding pigments and the resulting ink clots his pens; he can own up to that) and then all of those wriggling scratches and lines are lacquered over by the slick night sweats cooked out of him by his increasingly bleak dreams. He stares hard at all that crust and imperfection, feeling like he's sinking into a hypnotic, typhoon limbo. Like his entire ship is _trapped_ , held in thrall to some long and lightless oceanic path, to all the thirsty undercurrents sucking at little aimless vessels dressed in red sails and battered copper jacketing, bobbing stilled and forlorn and helpless in flat, fevered seas.

Baru startles up from her writing to scowl at the sound of his voice. It's irritating to see her there, sleek and cobra-coiled on the floor next to his hammock; and the feeling seems to be mutual. Her islander eyes glitter dangerously at him like small pieces of cracked glass in the light of a greasy candle. Less intimidating than she probably hopes, Svir thinks grimly, when you know she's only nearby because she is also too drunk and arrogant to go find the way back to her own bunk in the dark. He takes a moment to enjoy rocking his hammock into her side with a few yawning stretches before waving her stiff-shouldered hostility away.

"Not _you_ , for once," he adds. "You came from a whole bunch of parents, as I recall. I was talking to someone else."

He half-expects this to start an argument. Hopes for it, maybe; the present approximation of coffee on _Helbride_ is an inexplicable insult to the senses, and fighting with people always helps to wake him up.

But, of course, Baru skirts his expectations. Rather than raising her hackles, she gives the space over his head a strange smile and silently returns to her scribbling in the gloom of ship's-night.

Svir hates her. Hates that he has no maps of her intent. Hates that she is sprung from hunters and lensmakers, from a land of tectonic rift; it makes him superstitious, nearly convinced that she can stand on moonlight and see things in her blind side just before they actually happen.

And that's the real problem. Now he finds himself bound to a newborn cryptarch who embodies the hideous face of the future. The very shape of the monster that stalks him through patterns hacked into his wall. It smirks, like her; it makes _notes_ at him with a slimy, silvery wink; splits itself in half and _scurries_ out of his grasp just when he believes he's cornered it and gained the advantage.

Svir sulks under his ragged blanket, exhausted, and tries to imagine something more comforting. Lindon's company could never be so unsettling, he reminds himself. Far from it, he and Enwan seem to be at peace despite the peril of loving and being loved by the vain idiot foolish enough to name itself Apparitor. Even after enduring that terrifying ritual fête at The Elided Keep, they live their lives as it unfolds before them. They are fierce and fearless, flowing like molten rock that burns through even the coldest waters. They are content to take joy in the love and promise of their children. And Lindon, that fucking maniac seahawk! He freely pledged his life to treat with the deep waters that once lapped and slavered at his family as if they were dead things to be claimed by the tide. He locked hands with Svirakir under the grand marble dining table even as he realized that he had become a bargaining chip in Apparitor's personal bid for power.

Svir closes his eyes. Imagines that the luminous presence of his lovers and their family could burn a hole in the eye of the Empire.

And he sighs to himself, a bit more peaceful at last.

He goes back to sleep. At last.

And _at last,_ he dreams that they all rage together through the long white halls circling the Throne-In-Falcrest, darting forward like vengeful spirits, dancing and whooping bloody havoc to the high ceilings; and they find and blind the Emperor Itself as truly as Baru Cormorant is blind. They make all the deceivers unseeing. Together, they make all waters dark and peaceful and tideless, so that the waves can take no one beloved away.

* * *

(And those visions can't even describe his true nightmares.  
The distant volcanoes and green clouds on the horizon, boiling over without warning.  
The corpses with faces he cannot bear to see slack, tortured, gull-gobbled.  
He would be lost at the sight of them dead, _lost_ –)

* * *

Svir did not _mean_ to sleep so deeply. Most certainly not with a poison-tongued parasite lying in a knot at his feet; and he is hardly surprised that, when he does manage to rest, he still dreams up ruin and violence even with his loved ones in mind. That's an unassuming thing now, _oh yes, murder as usual, good morning..._ but at least a righteous family rampage is a more gentle tableau compared to all of the lonely shit that tends to haunt him. All those bleak and looming mountain slopes; and the reconditioning restraints and contraptions; and the manic hwatcha fire, the merciless Burn pouring and splattering over every inch of flesh and waxed rail, churning people together in the black waves like a foaming stew.

 _We earned the love of the Mother of Storms,_ he reminds himself sharply, over and over, trying to make himself keen again like a dull piece of steel running against a whetstone. _I'll get Lindon out, we'll get everyone out, we'll go away beyond Her. The children will play on a dry deck beneath a sky that breathes out steady winds and kind currents to guide our escape. We'll find safe harbour on a golden shore, and I'll be the fucking king of the mountain after all. Why do I have to wake up to this shit?_

Svir hacks up laughter at himself. His voice is sharp and startling when he's dehydrated; the sound wakes him up fully and nearly tips him onto the floor. For a moment, he tries to haul himself upright. Then he sighs, has to admit that he's hungover and very stupid when he's overtired anyway. So what task could be so urgent? He flops back and pauses to take pleasure from the fact that at least some of his daydreams are pleasant for once. And after he has scrubbed the blur of crusts and moisture from his sensitive eyes, he notices Baru is gone. A very auspicious sign. _So,_ he thinks. Might as well get up and see what horrid schemes she might have formed in the pale light of a new day. Then he indulges himself a little more. Maybe she and Yawa are busy thwarting each other. Maybe one or both of them has pitched the other overboard out of pettiness.

Maybe no one that he cares for is doomed to die today.

"Just grant me a few small mercies," Svir implores softly, to the future and himself, then stumbles out of his cabin to arrange all the mercy he can muster.

**Author's Note:**

> I saw your letter and loved several prompts within it! Happy Yuletide, you delightful person ♥


End file.
